Ezra sent to Jerusalem by the Gentile king

Alas! this was not the end of the history. God, in His goodness,
must still watch over the unfaithfulness and the failures of His
people, even when they are but a small remnant who by His grace
have escaped from the ruin. He puts it into the heart of Ezra, a
ready scribe in the law of Moses, to think of the remnant in
Jerusalem, to seek the law of Jehovah, to teach it and cause it to
be observed. Here again it is still the Gentile king who sends him
for this purpose to Jerusalem. All blessing is of God, but nothing
(except prophecy, in which God was sovereign, as we have already
seen in the case of Samuel at the time of the people's downfall),
nothing in point of authority comes immediately from God. He could
not pass by unrecognised the throne which He had Himself
established among the Gentiles upon the earth. And Israel was an
earthly people.

The good hand of God

The character of this intervention of God by Ezra's mission is,
I think, a touching proof of His loving-kindness. It was exactly
suited to the wants of the people. It was not power. That had been
removed to another place. It was the knowledge of the will and the
ordinances of God, -- of the mind of God in the word. The king
himself recognised this (chap. 7: 25). Guarded by the good hand of
his God, this pious and devoted man goes up with many others to
Jerusalem.